| rdfs:comment
| - Amanda Barrie (born Shirley Anne Broadbent on 14 September, 1935 in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire) is an English Actor.
- Born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, Barrie attended St Anne's College, St Anne's on Sea. She then trained at the Arts Educational School in London and later at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She appeared in pantomime as a child and was a dancer before acting in a number of British television and film roles in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as presenting Hickory Housewith former Coronation Street star Alan Rothwell between 1973 and 1977. She was also in two of the Carry On films, a long-running series of British comedy films: she had a supporting turn as a cab driver in Carry On Cabby (1963) and took the title role in Carry On Cleo (1964), which helped her on her way to becoming an international star of stage and screen. In 1975, she played Mrs. B.J. Spence in the Walt Disney film One of
- She took ballet and singing lessons as a child but was expelled from her St. Anne's college for skipping lessons for further ballet tuition. Her drama coaching took place at the Cone-Ripman School. At the age of thirteen she appeared in pantomime and in one performance danced off the stage and into the orchestra pit.
|
| abstract
| - Amanda Barrie (born Shirley Anne Broadbent on 14 September, 1935 in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire) is an English Actor.
- Born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, Barrie attended St Anne's College, St Anne's on Sea. She then trained at the Arts Educational School in London and later at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She appeared in pantomime as a child and was a dancer before acting in a number of British television and film roles in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as presenting Hickory Housewith former Coronation Street star Alan Rothwell between 1973 and 1977. She was also in two of the Carry On films, a long-running series of British comedy films: she had a supporting turn as a cab driver in Carry On Cabby (1963) and took the title role in Carry On Cleo (1964), which helped her on her way to becoming an international star of stage and screen. In 1975, she played Mrs. B.J. Spence in the Walt Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. After roles in a string of one-off television plays and series, she appeared in a guest role as a ballet mistress in the popular BBC comedy series Are You Being Served? in 1979. Amanda worked for many years as a chorus girl in the West End until her first break as an actress came along. At sixteen she danced at the Windsor Club with Danny La Rue and Barbara Windsor, changing her name before making her West End debut in 1961's 'Babes in the Wood'. Throughout the sixties Amanda worked on many stage productions including 'Cabaret', 'Private Lives', 'Hobson's Choice' and 'Aladdin', and continued to perform on stage until the mid-1980s. Barrie is well known for her role as a café proprietor's wife, Alma Sedgewick (later Baldwin), on Coronation Street. She was a bit-player in the early to mid-1980s before she was offered a contract in 1988, after which she became a very well known character. She continued in the role until her retirement in 2001. In the story, Alma was diagnosed with cervical cancer which later caused her death. Since leaving Coronation Street, she continued to act, firstly as Margo Phillips in the long-running BBC soap opera Doctors for nine episodes, and in the popular ITV1 prison series, Bad Girls, playing inmate Bev Tull from the fifth series to the last, along with Phyl Oswyn played by Stephanie Beacham. The characters together were known as "The Costa Cons". She also became one of the celebrities who took part in Hell's Kitchen; a popular ITV1 "reality TV" series which screened in 2004. While on the show, she became so frustrated with Gordon Ramsay, that she tried to slap him across the face. From November 2006 to January 2007, Amanda took a starring role in the pantomime adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk in Canterbury. From December 2007 to January 2008, she appeared as the Fairy Godmother in the pantomime adaptation of Cinderella at the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. From December 2008 to January 2009, she played the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool. She again played the role from December 2009 to January 2010 in Rhyl. In December 2010 and January 2011 she played the role in Bournemouth. She will play the role again from December 2011 to January 2012 in Worthing. On Tuesday 7 August 2012 she also appeared in the BBC drama Holby City as troubled, sassy, failed actress Annabella Casey. From December 2013 to January 2014 she will play Fairy Godmother once again at the Marina Theatre in Lowestoft.
- She took ballet and singing lessons as a child but was expelled from her St. Anne's college for skipping lessons for further ballet tuition. Her drama coaching took place at the Cone-Ripman School. At the age of thirteen she appeared in pantomime and in one performance danced off the stage and into the orchestra pit. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen and, as soon as she was able to, she moved to London working mostly as a chorus girl and dancer. She changed her name to Amanda Barrie in 1958 and made her TV debut in a Morecambe and Wise show. She had further drama training at the Bristol Old Vic but focused primarily on musical reviews although her range of stage performances included Cabaret (as Sally Bowles), Private Lives, Hobson's Choice, Any Wednesday and A Public Mischief. She also started to make name for herself in comedy films, appearing in A Pair of Briefs. Doctor in Distress and Carry on Cabby and it was this latter role that led to possibly her most famous and well-known performance (pre-Coronation Street) when she was cast in the title role in the 1964 film Carry on Cleo. By the standards of the Carry on… series this film in the run was expensive and highly successful and Amanda's performance as the ditzy femme fatale won rave reviews. Her eclectic career continued to span stage, film and television work, the latter including dramas such as The Wednesday Play, ITV Playhouse, Danger Man and an appearance as Hermia in a 1971 BBC Play of the Month production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but she also appeared in plenty of comedies including The Many Wives of Patrick, Miss Jones and Son and Are You Being Served?, as well as, most notably, Whose Baby Are You?, a second season episode of Coronation Street spin-off Pardon the Expression in 1966. Continuing to work solidly through the 1970s, her next brush with Weatherfield came in June 1981 when she appeared in four episodes of Coronation Street as Alma Sedgewick, the workshy wife of café owner Jim Sedgewick who employed and then rowed with Elsie Tanner. Amanda has confessed on several occasions that she found acting opposite Patricia Phoenix to be a "terrifying ordeal" but she returned for a further eight episodes between April and June 1982. Amanda was then absent from the Street for six years before returning as a regular in November 1988 when her character was involved in a series of storylines with Ken Barlow and Mike Baldwin who Alma eventually married, enduring a tempestuous relationship. She continued in the high-profile part until June 2001 when she left the programme, complaining that he found the "tragic" storylines in which she was involved to be not to her taste, much preferring the comic, gutsy version of Alma that she had first played. She was also vocal in condemning her character's exit as a victim of cervical cancer, stating that such cancers take a far longer time to spread than happened in the somewhat-concatenated timeline shown in the programme. Amanda went on to appear in several episodes of Doctors but also made forty-one episodes of the Brian Park-produced series Bad Girls (2003-2006) in which she played the somewhat-camp inmate Beverley Tull. She was also a guest panelist on Loose Women, appeared in Holby City and had an infamous altercation with chef Gordon Ramsay on reality cooking show Hell's Kitchen. In 2015, she reunited with former Street colleague Sherrie Hewson in the hit ITV comedy Benidorm, thirty years after they first worked together in the original West End stage production of Stepping Out. Amanda was married to actor and director Robin Hunter in 1967 although they separated in the 1980s. An optic illness which built up in the late 1990s led to the loss of the sight in her left eye and in 2003 she published her autobiography It's Not a Rehearsal in which she revealed her bisexuality. She married her long-term partner - the crime writer Hilary Bonner - in September 2014.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)